[Mezzie]

I appreciate that, but I don't think it's necessary. It's more a commentary on the fact that trigger warnings are so varied and personal that accurately making them for all of us PTSD sufferers puts a huge mental burden on people. Sometimes, that's appropriate - I have no problem asking my friends, remaining family members, or therapist/other medical providers to accommodate my desires, but I think asking strangers on the Internet to do so in public spaces is placing an undue burden on them. And for healthy people, that might not not a big deal, but a lot of people without PTSD might still be depressed, anxious, bipolar, ADHD, etc. or just plain exhausted and it may represent a prohibitively difficult thing to ask of them. Never mind once we get into things like cultural differences.

In my experience, the people who are most zealous about enforcing content warnings are people who like the social power it gives them over others and who lash out when they're made uncomfortable, and that's not acceptable. Being uncomfortable or triggered is obviously fine and you can't control that, but that doesn't give us the right to lash out at others or expect people to just 'know' what might set us off.

[kayodelycaon]

I think that the people in the middle don’t stand out. I’m in a group of writers. None of us are jerks about “trigger warnings”. We just put some obvious content warnings (rape, suicide, etc) before the main text and call it a day.

You’ll never be able to put in every trigger. For example, angry drunk people. I’d never expect anyone to warn me about that in any form of media. (Goodfellas is awesome, btw)

There is a reasonable middle ground here. A short list of the most common issues better than nothing while not being onerous. Is mentioning your story includes a graphic depiction of rape difficult? I had a rather frank discussion with a fellow author who gave me that one without warning me.

Obviously the most vocal will never be happy. They can go hug a cactus.

[Mezzie]

> Is mentioning your story includes a graphic depiction of rape difficult? I had a rather frank discussion with a fellow author who gave me that one without warning me.

My point is that there are conditions where yes, that's difficult. What counts as 'graphic' versus any depiction? I would genuinely have no idea because I'm so desensitized. Getting a 'frank discussion' over it and acting like I'm that way on purpose is just telling me not to be in the group because I don't share the invisible sensitivity level. It's the invisible part I object to, by the way. If there's a list of things to warn for and guidelines, I have no problem with it. But most people/groups won't do that because they like to pretend that there's something objective about what they chose as sensitive subjects rather than admitting 'hey I think we need some cultural boundaries around what's acceptable in a public space, let's discuss it' because they know it opens the discussion to other (usually more conservative) cultural boundaries.

For example, those spaces warn for suicide but not blasphemy. Or how about explicit consensual sex? Sex involving trans people? (Depending on the sex act/how it's treated, it can be triggering to some people's dysphoria)?

The middle ground is still a value judgement. Just admit it instead of dancing around that it's for the disabled. It's not. Stop using us as a shield for what is considered moral or not moral or disturbing or not disturbing. Just say "Most people find rape abhorrent to read about, so warn about it".